Patrick Reusse: Darwin, baseball are intertwined

Dave Kelly's father ran the grain elevator in Darwin, Minn. Anyone with a connection to this village of 300 is required to have a sense of humor, as a mention of Darwin is followed by, "That's the burg that celebrates a ball of twine."

Francis Johnson, a farmer in the area, rolled the ball of twine. He died in 1989. The ball -- all 17,400 pounds of it -- was moved to a place of honor in town.

"Did you know that Francis' father, Magnus, was a United States senator from Minnesota?" Kelly said. "He served a couple of years in the 1920s as a member of the Farmer-Labor Party."

Kelly was raised in Darwin, went to St. Cloud State and became an accountant. He and his family settled in Bloomington. After retirement, he decided to do some research on his hometown's baseball history.

"I knew about the Miller family," he said. "The father, John, pitched for Darwin in the 1880s. And he and his wife had 13 kids, including 10 boys. Some of the younger brothers ... I played ball with their kids."

The more Kelly looked into Darwin baseball, the more fascinated he became with Fred, the second-oldest of the Miller clan. He was called "Lefty," and pitched with tremendous success for St. Thomas, town teams and in the minor leagues.

"The more research I've done, the more convinced I've become that Lefty's one of the best pitchers ever to come out of Minnesota," Kelly said. "He was drafted from the minors by Connie Mack and the Philadelphia Athletics in 1910. He passed on the chance to pitch for the Athletics to continue with medical school at the University of Illinois in Chicago."

Kelly presented his research about Miller to St. Thomas, with the idea of getting Lefty inducted into the Tommies Athletic Hall of Fame.

The athletic department did even better: Miller was a 2007 inductee into the hall last fall, and coach Dennis Denning also decided that the team's annual pitcher of the year would receive the Lefty Miller Award. The first winner this spring was Lonnie Robinson, a Division III All-America.

Miller pitched for the hometown Darwin-Dassel team in 1905, but he also hired out with other teams to help pay his St. Thomas tuition. He pitched for pay in Graceville, Minn., and in Westhope, N.D., in 1906.

Then, in 1907, he pitched in Houghton, Mich., in the Northern Copper County League. All the players in that league were salaried.

Miller needed to improve his summer income once he decided to enter medical school. In 1908, he pitched for the St. Paul Saints in the American Association.

Then, on July 9, with one day between starts, the Saints decided to start Miller again against the Milwaukee Brewers. This was done because St. Thomas was bringing a large delegation to the game.

"Lefty got clobbered," Kelly said, smiling.

Miller finished his first year of medical school and then went to the Seattle Turks of the Class B Northwestern League in 1909. "The manager, Mike Lynch, was from St. Paul, so that might be what got Lefty to Seattle," Kelly said.

He pitched one game for the Turks in May 1910, then was traded to the Vancouver Beavers. It was after that season that he became one of two Northwestern League pitchers to be drafted by a major league team.

Connie Mack gave this message to Miller: "You will have to make up your mind whether you want to be a doctor or a ballplayer. I can't have you showing up late for spring training every year."

Lefty played first base. Righthander Joe, younger by nine years, was the pitcher. Joe struck out 17, and the Millers won 4-3.

Joe served in World War I. "Joe pitched some ballgames while in France, and is said to have once gone against Grover Cleveland Alexander," Kelly said. "And Joe either won 1-0 or lost 1-0, depending on the version of the story."

Joe became a dentist and started a practice in Elgin, Ill. In 1932, he convinced Lefty to move there and start a medical practice in the same building.

Then, in 1942, Fred and his wife, Agnes, moved their family to San Bernardino, Calif., where he practiced medicine for many more years before his death in August 1971.

Lefty Miller was a long-forgotten name in the archives of St. Thomas and among Minnesota pitching greats, until Dave Kelly acted on his curiosity about Darwin hardball -- and not ones that weigh 17,400 pounds.